March 5, 2025 • 49 mins
Like the Avengers all came back in Endgame (spoiler!), Mike Ganino is back for round 2 on the podcast!
Mike joins Jason for a high-energy, no-fluff conversation on what it really takes to communicate with impact. Mike—speaker coach, improv performer, keynote director, and now author of Make a Scene—shares why storytelling, stage presence, and vocal delivery are critical skills for anyone looking to own their space in meetings, sales, and leadership.
From bad advice about public speaking to practical ways to own your voice and physicality, Mike and Jason break down the five Stage Languages that make or break a communicator.
🔹 Why everyone needs to care about communication—even if you're "not a speaker"
🔹 The biggest mistakes speakers & business leaders make (and how to fix them)
🔹 Why storytelling works and how to use it in your everyday life
🔹 Practical exercises to make you a better speaker TODAY
🎤 PLUS: Mike shares his favorite award season speech, Jason drops some tough love on bad Zoom etiquette, and they even give you a quick homework assignment—are you up for it?
🎧 Listen now and get ready to MAKE A SCENE.
Mike Ganino is a storytelling expert, speaking coach, and creative director who helps professional speakers, bestselling authors, and entrepreneurs make unforgettable scenes on stage. He’s the author of the new book Make A Scene: Storytelling, Stage Presence, and the Art of Being Unforgettable in Every Spotlight, a guide to showing up boldly and connecting deeply through with storytelling + stage presence.
A former TEDx Executive Producer and sommelier (because why not?), Mike has trained over 5,000 speakers using his signature Mike Drop Method—helping them craft messages that hit harder than a double espresso. His work has shaped viral TEDx talks, launched bestselling books, and transformed even the most stage-shy scientists into magnetic performers.
When he’s not turning everyday presenters into speaking superstars, you’ll find him sipping wine, doing Olaf and Sven (Frozen) impressions to make his daughter laugh, or trying (unsuccessfully) to convince his dog Elliott to appreciate Shakespeare.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jason Frazell (00:12):
Hey everybody.
This is a special one.
My guest on the show today isthe one and only Mike Ganino and
Mike and I were just catchingup.
Mike, you were on in 2020.
What's happened since 2020?
This is going to be outWednesday, I think March 3rd,
2025.
So in five years, what's reallyhappened?
And we were just laughing.
We're like, we had a pandemicand we each had an additional
(00:35):
human enter our lives.
Mike's done a small thing.
He's written a book, which isone of the things we're going to
talk about today.
And.
I told Mike he's two fifths ofthe way to his jacket, his
Cernit live jacket.
Some of my other guests, likeSheila, Steven Drum, who you
know has been on a few times.
Tony's saying, so Mike, we'll,we'll get your, we'll get your
jacket primed up.
I invited Mike here for a numberof reasons.
(00:59):
One, he's just a great, greatperson.
Two, he's written a fabulousbook that I got a chance to
read, and it's a topic that Ilove.
It's about speaking and morethan just speaking, making a
scene in any space you're in,which is a really important
thing.
And Mike, I told you this, we'regoing to do something we've
never done before.
And Mike, you're going to givethe audience something to do
right now.
(01:19):
And then Mike and I are going tosit back and we're going to
shoot the tea and then we'llcome back to you.
In other words, we're going topause for one second.
So Mike, what would you like theaudience to do right now?
And this is only for those ofyou who want to be a better
communicator.
So if you don't care about that,don't worry about this.
Otherwise, Mike, what do youwant them to do?
Mike Ganino (01:35):
Gosh, and if you don't care about that, call me
because I need to convince youwhy you need to care about that.
Because no matter what you wantto do in the world, your ability
to communicate it is important.
Okay, this also is the way thebook starts, by the way.
It's like kind of the mostunhinged introduction.
The very first words in thebook, besides the dedication of
my daughter, are literally thistask.
There's no soft open.
There's no little warm hugs.
(01:56):
It is this task.
Listener, take your phone.
Open the camera app, set it tovideo mode, prop it up to face
you or to not face you.
If you don't want to look atyourself, turn it the other way.
So you don't look at yourself,hit record and spend the next 60
seconds introducing yourself.
(02:16):
You could explain a personalmission, why you do what you do.
You could share a specificexample or instance that you had
to persuade someone tounderstand your mission or your
work.
You could describe an experiencethat has taught you a lesson
about the way that youcommunicate.
Your ideas, whatever it is, 60seconds, hit record, we'll
(02:36):
pause, this is weird for a lot,for uh, for radio, for, you
know, for radio, for recording,like, Do do do do do do
Jason Frazell (02:44):
do do Do that, we'll be here waiting.
Right here waiting for you.
Oh, yeah.
Well, Mike, the good thing aboutthis is if they're listening to
this on their phone, theyprobably need to pause the
podcast to do this.
I know.
Mike Ganino (02:59):
You know, it's funny at the end of the book,
one of the very last things Isay in the, in the, in the
closing chapter, not theappendix is, Hey, so, you know,
it's time to record your nextvideo.
And then I'm like, you didrecord a video at the beginning,
right?
Cause like, If you've gonethrough this book and done the
work, I want you to see how muchbetter you are now, because
video is the greatest tool to dothat.
Now, for everyone who just didthat, or if you didn't do that,
(03:20):
and you have a video recently,and you're like, what do I do?
We hate watching ourselves,Jason.
We It's
Jason Frazell (03:25):
awful.
Mike Ganino (03:26):
Well, I don't.
I enjoy it a lot, but that's me.
Um, we hate, because I'm alwayslearning.
I want to watch it say, was Ieffective?
Did it do what it needed to do?
That's what I'm watching for.
My, my four year old daughterloves to watch herself just
because she's She's a Leo sun inastrology and she just loves to
watch herself perform on video.
She goes, let me see me.
Let me see me in my phone allthe time.
(03:46):
So
Jason Frazell (03:46):
good.
Mike Ganino (03:47):
But when I'm watching video back and what I
want everyone to do with thosevideos they had that they just
did, or with the ones they'll doshortly, or one that you
recently did, watch it back.
And I want you to turn the audioall the way off and just watch.
How did you communicate?
What was your face saying?
What was your body languagesaying?
What was the takeaway fromthere?
You know, now flip it over andturn the audio on.
(04:10):
Don't watch yourself and justlisten, just listen.
Okay.
What's the takeaway there?
How was that?
And then finally do a third timewatch and listen together.
And what I hope happens forpeople that read the book is
that you learn not to watchyourself and say, Oh, I hate it.
I never want to do that again.
But you learn to watch yourselfand say, Ooh.
(04:31):
Now I know more choices I couldmake.
The choice I made in that momentwasn't effective.
It wasn't clear.
Let me make a new choice.
When I see someone on stage, orlike on video, who's not landing
it, I know two things.
One, they don't watch themselvesback on video at all.
Even on social media, they justdon't watch their stuff.
(04:53):
They don't listen to their ownpodcast episodes ever, so they
don't have the ability toimprove.
They just keep putting out stuffwithout improving.
And two, I think.
A lot of times I get texts allthe time from people like, Oh my
gosh, you won't believe thisperson speaking, they're awful.
My response is always, Wow, Ifeel so bad for them that they
didn't know they had otherchoices available to them.
Jason Frazell (05:16):
That is such a brilliant mindset shift that
it's all just about the choice.
And we're going to go back here,Mike, now that the audience is
like, who the heck is this guytelling me to click on my phone
to do this?
Let's talk a little bit aboutMike and I'll give you, you
know, like what I know of youand who you are in the world.
(05:37):
You're a, you're a, you're animprover by trade.
It's one of the many thingsyou're trained in improvisation.
You've directed Ted talks.
You train speakers around theworld, keynote speakers, people
that are doing businesspresentations.
You're an actor.
And you're a two time author.
The first book was not about,not about what we're going to
talk about today.
And you are now an author herein 2025.
(06:00):
And the name of the book, whichis brilliant, you need to get
it, Make a Scene, Storytelling,Stage Presence, and the Art of
Being Unforgettable in EverySpotlight.
Mike Ganino (06:09):
That
Jason Frazell (06:10):
is it.
It's a little bit of anintroduction.
You also said, because this showis all about people, you're also
a dad of a four year old, justlike me.
Also a dad of a four year old.
You're a husband.
And you are a Californian.
I am all of those things.
You are all of those things,amongst many other things.
So Mike, what else do you thinkwould be important for the
(06:30):
audience to know?
Mike Ganino (06:32):
You know, one of the things I, I really tried to
talk about too in the book, soit wasn't just like a, here's a
book on presentation skills andget rid of this and do this.
I tried to like, there's alittle memoir moments in there.
But I think the thing that's, Ifind helpful for myself to
understand about me is I am aperson who deeply, deeply
(06:52):
believe since I was a little kidbecause I grew up in poverty
with teen parents, other side ofthe tracks, trailer park, all of
the things I really believe thatour ability to change our
circumstances.
is based on how we communicate.
I truly believe that.
Like if we want to change theworld for sure, but if we want
(07:15):
to change our own circumstancesand those for our kids, a large
percentage of the success rateof that is dependent on our
communication skills and whatour communication skills are
costing us.
And if we can learn to make newchoices, we can make our way out
of a lot of situations.
Jason Frazell (07:37):
I want to give you and the audience a very
small, quite meaningless exampleof this, but it's true.
For me, we're currently sellinga, an old vehicle on Facebook
Marketplace.
And I had somebody that I thinkwould be a good buyer and they
just blasted me like there wasno warm up, no lead.
And it was like, Hey, does it dothis?
(07:57):
Does it do that?
Does it do that?
Does it do that?
Like a list of questions.
And I'm like, nope.
Like, and, and, and, and even assomething as small as that of
just a little bit of a way to.
Hey, I'm interested in the car,the warm up.
And I, I just, and I told mywife that she goes, that's fine.
I'm like, I don't want tointeract with this person just
on how it feels.
And, but the thing of it is, andwhat you're saying, and what we
know to be true, that person,there's probably nothing wrong,
(08:20):
there's probably, they don'teither know, or they don't,
maybe they don't care, but it'snot like, they're like, I want
to be perceived this way.
And that's one of the majorproblems, and one of the things
you talk about in the book isperception, reality, intention
versus impact, and how a lot ofit comes through the choice.
So Mike, we're gonna talk about,for this first episode, which
(08:43):
you'll be back on soon to be,this book is great and there's a
lot in here.
Let's first talk about some ofthe common misconceptions.
about communicating in anyformat.
I know, like really your breadand butter is directing keynote
speakers and such, but you do alot of work with businesses as
well.
Executives that are presentingto a board or people raising
venture capital.
(09:04):
What are some of themisconceptions that you probably
grew up with?
And I probably did too aroundpublic speaking and how to be a
great communicator.
Mike Ganino (09:13):
There's the classic ones, right?
The like, the bad advice peoplegive you, like we tell people
things like, don't say, um,well.
That is just a restrictivebehavior and saying, um, or
like, or something happens forreasons.
So let's address the issuethere.
And most research research showspeople don't care.
(09:34):
Like I say, um, a lot, it's ifit becomes distracting and if
you're using it as a crutchbecause you're feeling a certain
way, then it could becomeunhelpful.
But the solve there is not tofocus on not saying, um, it's to
replace it with, well, what dowe do instead?
The same way with.
How a lot of body language onstage is taught.
We teach people like, Oh, haveyour hands in a, in a pose like
(09:56):
this.
And it's like, what are wedoing?
The steeple, the steeple, theguy, the
Jason Frazell (10:01):
Jeff go, the Jeff Goldblum apartment.
com steeple, like sopretentious.
Mike Ganino (10:06):
And again, that is a choice someone makes when they
want to feel pretentious, whenthey want to feel guarded in a
way and far from someone.
So why would you make that onstage if that's not what you
want people to feel?
So we teach all of these, here'swhat to do with your hands,
don't gesticulate, all of thesethings that are not actually
helpful.
And Then we have speechstructure, right?
So then we tell people youshould have an introduction.
(10:28):
I saw this yesterday, Jason, ina professional speaking group,
somebody said, I'm working on myfirst speech.
What tips do you have?
A speech should have anintroduction, three supporting
points and a close.
Sure.
I guess.
I don't know.
But like, I don't know if that'sit.
That's like a five paragraphessay from high school.
(10:49):
We have bad storytelling advicewhere we say things like stories
have beginnings, middles, andends.
And I think everything does.
If I Walk away, like everythingis a beginning, middle and end.
So how is that helpful at all?
And then we have storytellingstructures and frameworks that
we teach of like, Oh, we needexposition.
(11:10):
And then we need, um, incitingincident.
And then we need a climax andthen we need a resolution.
And it's like, what kind of,what are we, what kind of story
are we telling that has climaxesin it?
What is going on here?
Jason Frazell (11:21):
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (11:21):
And it isn't helpful for what we're actually
trying to do, which is toconnect with other people.
And so.
I think, and of course, thenthere's always the, the goofy
things like, imagine theaudience naked, which sounds
like a non consensual crime, bythe way, so bad, um, you know,
we have all these bad advicethat don't actually help us do
the thing we're trying to do,which is to connect and
(11:42):
communicate with the people infront of us.
Jason Frazell (11:44):
Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, there, I'm going to addanother one to this is people
that talk faster, telling themthey need to slow down.
Right?
As a somebody who's had to workon this for myself.
And I do a lot of work, youknow, like corporate trainings.
A lot of people speak fast andthey get nervous.
(12:04):
What's the very natural thingthat's going to happen if I go,
Hey, Mike, don't do the thingthat you know, you're very
reliable to do and you'renervous.
And then you tell people, Oh,you need to slow down and all
they do, and then you ask them,Hey, what does that do for you?
Well, it just gets me up in myhead and then I start to speed
up anyway, versus take a pause.
Like take a breath, like these,like all these acting and
(12:26):
speaking things.
There's just so much.
It's not, I wouldn't say it'snecessarily bad advice.
It's all good in principle.
It just doesn't work in themoment.
I think is the, one of the bigproblems that people have.
It's like all advice.
It's not all helpful.
Yeah, like don't say, um, andthen you say, um, you go, Oh, I
just said, um, I guess, whichis, which you have to ask
yourself now,
Mike Ganino (12:46):
what is the reason not to say, um, and can I focus
on that reason the same way withsomebody who's speaking so fast,
just so they can get through itbecause they're so nervous.
The answer to that is to one.
Change the way you prep to inthose moments to have some
reliable tools to calm you downand three to stay connected to
(13:09):
who you're talking to becauseyou'll start to see their face
and you'll start to say, Ooh, Ishould slow down.
I should speed up.
I should pause.
I should check in because we doall of that pretty naturally
anyway, one on one.
So what we need to replicate isthat level of intimacy when
we're with groups.
Jason Frazell (13:28):
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (13:28):
And, and focusing on the what not to do is just
not helpful.
Jason Frazell (13:31):
Yeah.
What not?
Yeah.
Let's talk about.
I love this.
Well, I love this framework thatyou have.
I love frameworks.
It's especially for a top, well,especially for Pete and, you
know, as an author, especiallyfor people that this field, this
can feel like a reallyintimidating topic, especially
for people that.
Hey, I want to be a speaker orI've been told I need to be a
(13:54):
better communicator at work andthey go, what's next?
I'm sure you've worked withpeople.
They get, they get the feelingyou need to be a better
communicator at work.
And the next question should be,what do you mean?
They're like, we don't know you,or you need to work on your
executive presence.
Right.
What does that mean?
I don't know.
So I really love that you camewith the framework around the
five stave language, stave,stage languages as a way to have
(14:18):
people think about these fivedifferent areas.
And some of these people don'tthink about, I'm sure.
I know I don't always thinkabout these as well.
So let's talk briefly about eachof these and why they're
important in the overall contextof, being the best communicator
you can be.
And also, I want to set this forthe audience.
Everything we're talking aboutis also being the most authentic
Mike and the most authenticJason, not a robot that sounds
(14:40):
like your favorite speaker,because nobody likes to listen
to those people.
And we all know those people.
Mike Ganino (14:46):
Yeah.
Jason Frazell (14:46):
So, so Mike, let's talk about the five stave,
staves, stage languages.
What do we need to know aboutthem?
Mike Ganino (14:53):
These came up for me when I, I was a speaker
myself and I was teaching likestorytelling for leaders and
more like, how do you tell astory about your company and
that kind of thing and talkingabout company culture and pieces
like that.
How do you do new hireorientation more engagingly?
And I had a client who wanted meto come back.
And work with their executiveteam to help them be better
presenters, because I spoke attheir conference for all their
(15:15):
general managers.
It was a hotel group and at theend, so did all their executives
or chief marketing officer,chief HR, yada, yada.
And they said.
Everyone remembered these littlestories and they loved you.
And then our executives wereboring, not engaging.
It, it lowers your trust level.
If you're not a greatcommunicator, it isn't just that
(15:37):
you don't gain the benefits ofbeing a good communicator.
It's that it can cost youbecause people say, I didn't
trust them.
I didn't like them.
They didn't seem like they caredabout us.
All of those things can happenfrom that.
And so they had me come back into work with their executive
team to prep them.
And at this point it's 2015 or16.
I was a couple of years intospeaking.
(15:57):
And so they said, Hey, can youdo this?
And I said, Oh yes, absolutely.
Yeah.
I know exactly what to do.
And then I was like, I don'tknow how to do this, but what do
I do?
And at first I did that thing wenormally do of like, well, let
me see what, what do otherpeople say you should do to
teach public speaking?
And all of it was awful.
It was all awful advice.
And I thought none of this isgoing to do.
None of this is what I'm doingwhen I'm up there.
So what am I doing?
(16:19):
And I realized all of thesethings that I'd learned as a
performer doing sketch comedyand theater, one person shows
improv in Chicago, but also as awriter, writing shows for myself
and other people, and also as adirector, directing other
people's shows, directing, um,sketch shows and things like
that, that the things that I.
(16:41):
Sitting in an audience, youknow, a lot of public speaking
coaches are thinking about thespeaker on stage and how to
change you, what you need to dodifferent to be a good speaker.
I really act like a director andI sit in the audience's seat and
I say from the audience'sperspective, what are they
looking at and what are thetools?
And so, you know, initially withthis first hotel client, I
(17:04):
didn't.
Come up with the five stagelanguages right away, but the
early origins of it did andeventually it was oh These are
the five levers.
These are the five places.
We can make choices on stagethat impact an audience It's a
nice
Jason Frazell (17:19):
love that
Mike Ganino (17:20):
day.
Um, the first one is verbalverbal is largely about the
choices We make with the wordswe say so, how are we telling a
story?
How are we putting together our?
Bits, how can we be funny?
How can we?
Package this so that theaudience is on the edge of their
seat so that we're leveragingall the, you know, a lot of
times we hear you should tell astory and we have these bad
(17:43):
storytelling frameworks and thenwe see people telling stories,
we're like, well, it wasn't agood story, so I don't know.
Did it help them because.
It isn't looking at the rightelements of storytelling.
It's like we copy the wrongparts, right?
Like, ooh, we should do exactlywhat the story did because
that's why it worked, but we'reignoring why it actually worked.
And so in that section, Iintroduced the idea that what
(18:05):
we're trying to do is Reallycontrol the dopamine for an
audience verbally, because whatwe're wanting is this
anticipation of reward.
Like when we watch a TV show, aplay, read a book, even like I'm
such a, I was leaving a bookreview of a fiction book
recently.
And I was like, the pacing ofthis book is chef's kiss.
(18:26):
It's delicious because it, younever got to the point where you
thought, God, where's thisgoing?
It was always like, I can't waitto hear what happens next.
An example of the verballanguage would be, I could say,
I used to work in an office inManhattan and it was one of
those offices, very tallbuilding, very intimidating.
I took the elevator up to the87th floor.
(18:48):
It was all glass conferencerooms.
And so one day I had a meetingthere.
Okay, cool.
Not that interesting to seewhere's this going.
Or I could start and say, I'msitting with my hands on my
knees, worried that my jeans aregoing to be soaked with sweat,
as I stare at the rest of thebuildings below, bur uh,
billowing smoke out, and I seeher walk in the office.
(19:09):
It doesn't help my hand sweat asshe gets closer to the
conference room.
Now that's not even a goodexample, but people are like,
Ooh, why is he nervous?
Why is he in this building?
Why is he wearing jeans?
Who is the woman coming into theoffice?
Why is he scared?
And so we can tell stories andwe can put together our speeches
and our presentations in a waythat gets the audience.
(19:30):
Constantly dopamine triggered towant to know what happens next.
So that's the verbal, that's theverbal one.
And in that section of the book,I really talk a lot about
storytelling.
Um, once you've got the wordsdown, you got to say them.
So the second one is voice.
It's the vocal image.
And this is really something Ifind a lot of people have never.
(19:53):
Thought about it makes sense.
Right.
The first part, verbal your,your words and your story makes
sense, but vocal, we forget onpodcasts, on video, on
presentations, on webinars, andkeynote speeches, it is largely.
A physical job, right?
Cause your voice is physical.
(20:13):
It is muscles and air movingaround and turning ideas into
sounds sounds into words.
Okay.
But we often don't think aboutall of the choices we can make
with our voice.
We can speed up, which iseffective if you want an
audience to feel like it'smoving very quick or to Rattle
(20:35):
off something like and Icouldn't believe that she was
talking to me She was looking atme everything in the room was
going like that can help anaudience feel something we can
Slow things down when we wantpeople to tune in To listen, we
can go into this place in ourvoice so we can play with all of
these levers in our voice, butmost of us are unaware of the
(20:56):
choices we could make.
And so we end up playing thesame kind of key on the piano
all the time.
Like we have all these keys andwe play the same two because we
don't realize.
Oh, there's an impact to the wayI sound, to the way I'm
breathing and how that comes outof my mouth and creates meaning
for someone.
So voice is that second one.
(21:17):
And there's all these littlelevers we can pull.
And in the book, actually,there's this fun, like bonus
half chapter on the voice one.
That's all about thesearchetypes that people fall into
vocally, which are useful.
If we leverage all of them, butnot if we get stuck.
So like the coach archetype,you've probably seen this in
speakers where they get up thereand they are really just trying
(21:39):
to get people to understand,yeah, this matters.
We have to go.
We get the intellect who likesto really pontificate and they
speak a little slower.
All of those are good ifleveraged together, but getting
stuck in one of them could costyou impact.
Okay, so now brilliant.
We've got our words.
We've turned those words intosounds that have meaning to an
(22:02):
audience.
Now we've got our bodies.
The third stage language is ourphysicality, which is another
place.
I think a lot of people just donot spend time thinking about
maybe they've gone and done someacting training.
So they think of like blockingthe speech of like, I'm going to
do an action like this, but whatI'm talking about here, that is
(22:23):
there, that is helpful, but howdoes your proximity impact an
audience member?
How close you are to them.
If you're telling a story aboutgiving your baby a bath.
I do this in my talk.
It's the closing of like akeynote.
I deliver.
I talk about her being in theNICU because my, my daughter was
born, uh, at 28 weeks.
So she was very, very smallpreemie.
(22:44):
And I talk about kneeling and Ikneel on stage.
I get to the lip of the stage,very intimate, very close to the
audience.
If I did it further back, itdoesn't have the same feeling,
Jason Frazell (22:54):
but I get
Mike Ganino (22:54):
right up on the lip of the stage.
I lean down on one knee, Okay.
And I put my little hand up andI say, she's holding my hand.
She's two pounds.
She's holding my little finger.
And I remember in that moment,I'm not a religious person, but
I prayed to, uh, I think I'd saysomething like I prayed to God,
Buddha and lady Gaga, justhoping I hit all the bases
usually gets a laugh.
Um, so then I'm holding herfinger and I say, I'm never
(23:17):
going to leave you.
Yada, yada.
Then I replay that scene in aminute.
I get back on my knee.
It's her taking a bath.
And me talking to her in herbath with her little finger.
So that physicality of meleaning down creates intimacy
with the audience.
Right?
So sometimes people will comeand say, Oh, people didn't
laugh.
People didn't cry.
And they're focused just on thewords they're saying the verbal
(23:39):
language, but our physicalitycan tell people how to feel
hopping off stage and gettingright up with an audience
member.
So good.
And you do so much really highlevel training, Jason, you
probably see this all the time,all the time, knowing how to
Jason Frazell (23:51):
use the whole room.
I want to, I want to ask yousomething on the physical piece
specifically, you do a lot ofwork with people on virtual as
well.
And so do I.
Yes.
And, and, you know, Mike and Ihere, even in this interview,
you all are not seeing Mike, butMike is leaning in.
He's moving back.
He's moving a little bit leftand right using his space.
(24:13):
This is a question I get all thetime.
He's like, this all soundsgreat, but I don't speak on a
lot of people.
And you probably hear this allthe time when you're working
with companies.
This is all nice, but I don'tspeak on stages.
My, my thing is I do it in ateam meeting, or maybe I'm at a
salesperson.
How does the physical, and Iknow we're going to get into
some other parts of this that,you know, cause everybody can
understand the verbal and thevocal.
(24:33):
You can do that all the time.
Let's talk about physical as itrelates to virtual environments.
Mike Ganino (24:38):
Yeah.
Well, and I'm going to say twothings really quick.
One is.
If someone's watching andsaying, Oh, I'm not on a big
stage at the lip of the stage,talking about my infant
daughter, Mike, I don't needthat.
Great.
If you're in a presentation withfive people, where you sit,
where you stand, when you standup, if you lean and put your
hands down on the desk, thoseall send emotional triggers to
(25:00):
them.
And we don't think that all thetime I'll work with executives
or salespeople who are goinginto physical rooms still, but
they're not on stage.
It's a meeting room and they donot think about where they
stand, where they sit.
They don't think about any ofthose pieces.
Um, even down, this is a reallyeasy one.
This is a little pro tip beforeI go to virtual.
If you are the personpresenting, sit closest to the
(25:22):
TV in the room, wherever the,wherever the slides are gonna
be, or the, whatever you'relooking at.
Because then when you'retalking, the audience can look
at you in the screen.
I was, I was coaching someonethe other day, their sales team,
and they had learned fromsomeone to sit on the other side
of the room, so they could talktowards the slides.
And it was like Now what you'remaking the audience do is left,
(25:43):
right, left, right, the wholetime, versus sit by it so you
can always see them, even Whenthe audience is watching the
slides, you could see theaudience.
You could start to read.
I think they're getting it.
I don't think they're gettingit.
She looks uncomfortable.
Such a great tip for physicalityin a room.
Again, imagine someone standingup gently, leaning their hands
(26:04):
down like, Hey, we've got to getto work.
Let's get going here.
You ready?
It sends a signal.
So even if you're not on a bigstage, physicality matters, even
in boardrooms, all handsmeetings, virtually so many
people get stuck.
Jason, you're so right.
Get stuck with like looking likea hostage and it's like only
good.
The, the, the, the frame, theway they frame their camera is
(26:28):
just like above the nipples totheir head, right?
So it's like, you're just like adisembodied head speaking.
Your hands are below you.
So if you do gesticulate, it'slike, what are you doing down
there?
Like what's happeningunderneath?
Cause you can't see them.
Yes.
It's like, what's happening?
A lot of times they don'tunderstand the angle of the
camera.
(26:48):
So there'll be looking like,yes, daddy.
Hello.
Or there'll be looking down likean overlord.
All of that impacts how we feeloutside of all the camera
framing and that stuff.
We have that alone, but littletricks, right?
Like so far on this podcast,people are listening, but I am
using my hands.
(27:08):
Yeah.
Same as I would in person.
I am connecting to the camera.
And, and gesturing to it, if Iwas doing something and I wanted
to say that, like, you know, inthe beginning you asked me the
question of what are the tipsthat people get wrong.
Let's say that I said somethinglike, Ooh, I've got three and a
bonus one that I don't tellanybody.
The first one is this, thesecond one is it, the third one
(27:30):
is this.
Okay.
Now what I'm doing for theaudience is listening.
I'm pretending like I'm about totell a secret.
So I'm going to look over myshoulder on camera, like, okay.
So here's this one.
I never tell anybody and I'mgoing to lean forward maybe and
say, okay, so come here.
Here's the deal.
I'm going to change my voice.
All of that.
I have access to all of that onvideo.
So why wouldn't I do it?
(27:52):
But we don't think that we thinkI'm going to sit here.
I did a, um, Instagram postrecently.
I was in Portland and I wasdoing a, I was there for a
speaking gig, a workshop onstorytelling, but then I had a
TV interview to do.
And in my hotel room, I took.
You know, the ironing boardstacked a suitcase on top, put a
(28:14):
trash can on top of that, thenmy laptop and camera on top of
that so that I could get a goodangle that I could be standing
up and that I could havelighting on me.
So I didn't look on national TVlike I was in a relocate witness
relocation program because I'vedone all this signals, right?
Because it signals to theaudience.
(28:34):
We tell the audience how tofeel.
Jason Frazell (28:36):
I've got a couple things to add here, things that
I've seen.
One, the hostage is one look,the other look I call is the Kid
at the adult Thanksgiving table,and they're taking up like a
third of the screen.
And you, and I, and I see reallysenior people sometimes doing
this.
I'm like, why would you do that?
And they, and they have like ablank wall behind them or
(28:59):
something else that's just notvisually appealing.
And, that's the first one.
The second thing that I see alot is the, that I, that I
really, really hate is peoplethat have moving virtual
backgrounds.
Why would you ever do that toyour audience?
Moving?
(29:19):
Moving.
So, Zoom has moving virtualbackgrounds.
And sometimes companies willcreate, and they're almost like
a meme, or a gif, but they're avirtual background, and every
now and again I'll go into aplace, people use that, I said,
don't ever do that again, it'sjust bad.
Like, we under, we understand invirtual you may not have a great
space to work in, you may betraveling, you may have, you
(29:41):
know, kids running around behindyou, that's cool, blur your
background, whatever.
But some of these things you seeand, and I'll, I'll say to
people, as we, the training workI do, we talk about this, I'll
say, there's just no reason,unless you're just not paying
attention.
Yeah.
Not paying attention.
It is, it is.
And then the last one I'll sayis the hostage is the total
backlight where you end uplooking, I call it the witness
(30:03):
protection.
Mike Ganino (30:04):
Yes.
Where, where you're just like asilhouette.
Jason Frazell (30:08):
And so, and, and so, yeah, I'll say this, Mike,
for, for everybody listening issome of these things you may go,
Hey, I'm never, I don't want tobe a speaker.
I don't, you know, like my jobis that, but these things are
things that all people should bedoing, like just straight up, if
you want to own your impact,make a, so yeah.
Thanks for all sharing allthose.
I love the kid at theThanksgiving day table,
Thanksgiving table look.
(30:29):
You're like, we know you're asix foot man.
Why are you taking up like onethird of the screen?
Mike Ganino (30:34):
And what is the impact of that, that the
audience wouldn't say theaudience doesn't know sometimes
why they feel how they feel, butthey leave feeling a certain
way.
And so it's so funny too,because our first episode when
you had me on was in 2020 and in2020 I had a whole, I had a huge
year lined up of going in anddoing a ton of workshops with,
(30:56):
uh, one of my big clients was abig financial.
Like a hedge fund company.
And I was going to go all overGermany, Australia, it was going
all over to work with theirteams on presentation and story
skills.
COVID happened.
Yeah.
We know, we know,
Jason Frazell (31:10):
we know where this, we know where this story
is going.
Mike Ganino (31:12):
And I thankfully have a good contract, so they
weren't going to get their moneyback, but we could do lots of
creative things.
And so I was trying to help themout and I, to see like, how
could I still help?
So I called my contact and Isaid, Hey, are they all, how are
they doing their jobs?
Because they used to travel orthey would bring clients into
New York or to Mountain View orto Hong Kong and meet them
(31:34):
there.
How are they doing it?
And she's like, over Zoom, and Isaid, do you guys record it?
She's like, yeah.
I said, can you send me acouple?
She did.
And I was like, Oh.
Well, this is how I earn outthis money because over and
over, I was like, these peopleare asking governments, like
they're the kind of people thatwould go in and tell like the
country of Australia, how theyshould be investing their, their
(31:58):
governmental, like the versionof 501k essentially, what should
they be investing in to the tuneof like 5 billion and it
Jason Frazell (32:05):
was government pension stuff.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (32:07):
Yes.
And I was like.
The camp, the angles look weak,the lighting is awful, you could
fix a lot with lighting, the,all of it's awful.
And I was like, it is costingthem, Gravitas, it's costing
them deals.
So here's my proposal for you.
And I, I recouped like 400, 000in revenue that would have just,
eventually I would have earnedit, but I wasn't going to earn
(32:29):
it in 2020.
Cause They were going to paywhen I did the work.
So at some point I would have,but I was able to still move
forward with all of that bycoaching and teaching these
people how to do what theyneeded to do.
And they were, again, sometimesit was one person presenting to
a group of five, or it wasteams.
I worked a lot with like, Hey,if there's going to be three of
(32:49):
you presenting So how do you dothat in a way that feels good
and natural and uh, it reallymakes a big difference.
I mean, you know this, you seethis every day.
Jason Frazell (32:59):
I need to ask you, Mike, did you, did you have
an Arnold Schwarzenegger twinstype contract for that?
Where you said, I'm going to,I'm going to reduce my upfront
fee, but I'm going to take apercentage of all the ways you
increase this thing.
Like the famous story about whenhe did that movie, that was the,
that's how he got into hiscomedy, comedy years and Jack
Nicholson and Batman as well.
Yeah.
You're like, Hey, I'll just takea percentage of your profits.
(33:20):
It's fine.
Yeah, I should have.
Next time.
So we've got, so, so far for theaudience, we've got verbal.
It's what you say.
We've got vocal.
It's how you say it.
We've got physical, how are youusing your body, how you're
using your body language, yourface, one thing you need to say,
your face, how are you, youknow, I, I say this a lot, if
(33:40):
you go into a meeting room andyou say, I'm really excited to
be here, we should believe thatyou're really excited to be
there.
Yeah.
Come with a, come with a nice,um, resting bitch face as you
say that, or, I'm so happy
Mike Ganino (33:51):
you're all here, but you look, yeah.
I called it in the book, calledit resting bro face, resting bro
face.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the, the fourth one isvisual.
So what are the visual elementsyou have to you?
So this is in a virtual setting.
This is your background.
It's of course your lighting.
It's even down to, this isreally, so right now we're doing
this podcast interview and Forpodcasts, it's very, if people
(34:16):
are watching the video, we bothhave microphones in front of us,
which makes sense because we'redoing an interview that fits,
but if I wanted this to feellike a conversation, like a TV
show, like a, like a TVinterview, I don't use this
microphone, I use a lav mic.
Even for virtual, um, segmentswhere I'm, where I'm recording
here and they're filming instudio, I use a lav mic because
(34:39):
it sends the signal to theaudience differently because you
don't see these kinds ofmicrophones in a TV show.
So I think about that too, oflike.
Is there visually something thatthe microphone is communicating
when I do sales videos, I use aboom mic or a lav mic because I
don't want the microphone infront of me between me and the
(34:59):
person I'm talking to.
I wanted to feel more intimate,so little things like that for
virtual are the visual language.
What is the stuff around youcommunicating?
Um, a little pro tip to rightnow when I'm filming, I'm
standing.
With the camera in front of meand then I'm, it's crooked in
the room so that behind me isthe corner, the crease of the
(35:20):
wall where the two corners meet.
There are bookshelves on bothsides of that.
Those bookshelves point towardsme in the center.
Jason Frazell (35:28):
Yep.
Mike Ganino (35:28):
That is taking advantage of something that
cinematographers know all thetime, of how to use lines to get
the audience to look where youwant them to look.
So when you look at this onvideo, you're seeing a bookshelf
on my left and a bookshelf on myright, and those are both
pointing your eyes to focus onme in the middle.
Those little things do make adifference.
Visual is also your slides.
(35:50):
Your wardrobe.
It's all of those other toolsthat send a signal to the
audience.
So that's the visual.
And then the final one isemotional.
And this is really taking kindof, it's a little bit of a cheat
one, but it's really taking allthe previous four and saying,
what is the overall Experienceyou're creating for the
audience.
How are you hijacking theirhormonal, like the chemicals in
(36:15):
their body, the serotonin, the,the, um, the dopamine.
How are you triggering thethings that trigger emotional
responses in the audience?
And are you aware of them?
Do you have enough contrast?
So those are the five stagelanguages that I think are the
way that an audience sitting ina, in an arena.
(36:36):
An audience sitting at theirdesk watching you on a webinar,
an audience sitting watching apodcast interview, or four
people sitting in a boardroomwatching you present your idea
or your sales pitch.
These are the things that theydon't even recognize, but these
are the five areas that areimpacting what they walk away
with.
Jason Frazell (36:56):
I have to say I have a friend and he has a
podcast mic in front of him allthe time on Zoom and I'm
realizing now it feels like I'mbeing interviewed all the time,
even if we're just catching up.
And it's not, I don't, I don'tthink I've, I don't like
consciously go, Oh, this is, Ido think it's weird, but I
didn't know why until now.
Because it doesn't make
Mike Ganino (37:15):
sense contextually.
Jason Frazell (37:16):
It doesn't make sense contextually because we're
just doing a zoom with a one onone, but that's, that's his
setup is.
So, Mike.
I am very present to the factthat you do this for a living,
and I do this for a living, andthat's all fine and dandy to
talk about this, but not all,not all people, not all of us
are Mike and Jason and a lot ofother people that we know that
do this kind of work and helpyou with this, there are a lot
(37:37):
of people that go, eh, whocares?
And you probably have thesepeople all the time, and when
you're working with corporate,some people just don't care.
And I'll give you a greatexample, I do a lot of training
work with a big, Aerospacemanufacturer.
And a lot of those people arebrilliant.
They're like rocket science,rocket scientists.
(37:58):
They work in plants.
They're looking at numbers.
They're looking at things allday and they would say, yeah,
that sounds nice, but it's goingto feel too dramatic for, I hear
this, oh, this feels a littledramatic or the other people
will think that it's strangebecause they're so used to doing
it a certain way.
So I want to wrap for, for todayand talk a little bit about why
everybody should care.
And this is your opinion,obviously, but, and you cover
(38:19):
this in the book.
Why do we all need to care aboutthis?
Whether you're in sales, whetheryou're sitting in a cubicle,
looking at spreadsheets, whydoes all this matter?
Mike Ganino (38:30):
It really comes down to, and what I say to
people who, who say, Hey, Idon't care.
Fine.
I don't care if you care.
It doesn't matter either way.
The people who are listening toyou, the people that you're
communicating with are walkingaway based on all of these
things that we've shared todaywith an opinion of you, with an
opinion of your product, with anopinion of your service, or your
(38:53):
idea of your book or whatever itis, they're doing it either way.
So, I don't care if you care, Ipromise you they do.
And if you are saying to me,Hey, I give five presentations a
week and I landed every time Iget what I great, then don't
listen to me.
Keep doing what you're doing.
Cause it's working.
Yeah.
But if you find yourselfthinking, huh, I don't know why
(39:14):
I'm not getting every sale.
I don't know what to do toincrease my.
The, the, my employees listeningto our new initiatives and our
new ideas.
I don't know why audiencesaren't asking me to come back
and give another speech or togive another presentation.
I don't know why people aren'tbuying our product and signing
up for our SaaS service.
Then I would say if theproduct's good, if the idea is
(39:37):
good, it is these five leversand the way you communicate them
that determine whether peoplewalk away wanting to.
Listen to you, do business withyou, and adopt the way you
think.
And you cannot care about thatall you want.
I don't care.
I promise you.
The people listening do.
And they're making decisionsbased on how you show up.
Jason Frazell (39:56):
Yeah.
The other objection that I heara lot is, it's just not natural
for me.
I hear this a lot too.
And some, I've had people say, Idon't, I don't think I can, and
Everybody's got, you know, likeyour level, you've got a high
level of functionality to do allthese things.
Everybody's starting somewhere.
(40:16):
You started somewhere.
Some people, some of its nature,some of its nurture.
When I have people that will saythis just doesn't feel natural.
I know what I say.
I'm curious for the audience.
What do you say to that?
And I'm talking about people.
I think they're, what they'reactually saying is I don't think
I can do this is what I believethey actually mean by that.
Now that's not natural.
(40:37):
And I'm going to just share thisreally quick and anecdote.
What I'll say is.
They'll say, Oh, it feelsunnatural to be this, they'll
call it like dramatic orsomething.
I'll say, has any, have any ofyou ever read a book to a child?
And they'll go, ah, how do youread a book to a child?
You and I have four year olds.
You do not read your book toyour child.
Flat, monotone, no emotion, nothing.
(41:00):
Because the kid, the kid will,your, your worst critic will go,
this is boring.
And they will tune outimmediately.
So we, I would offer that we allknow how to do this.
And we all actually, we aremeant to do this.
Hmm.
And then we, and most of my workis in corporate, we get trained
through culture or through badtraining or not enough training
(41:22):
that these are not things thatwe, that are important or should
be done.
So what do you say when somebodycomes and gives an objection?
And of course the speaker is notgoing to say this, but a lot of
corporate people will say this.
Mike Ganino (41:32):
Yeah, no, it's because you say it a lot too,
um, the way that I teachstorytelling to make a scene,
like literally the name of thebook is make a scene because
it's twofold.
One is the like cultural, like,go do something, say something,
make a scene.
But then also like the way totell a story is to start in a
scene, make it a scene, like IfI always say, if you think
(41:53):
you're telling a story, myquestion is if I was there and I
was the director and I had todecide what to put in front of
the camera to film, are youtelling me that?
And if you're telling me when Iwas five, when I was little, I
used to always love to hang outwith my mom.
That's not a scene.
That's a summary.
I can't put that in front of acamera, but I can put a specific
time at Trader Joe's when youlove shopping for walnuts with
your mom that I can film.
(42:14):
So
Jason Frazell (42:14):
what
Mike Ganino (42:15):
I think about that is it's, so I get a lot of
pushback, even from professionalspeakers, Jason, where they say,
ah, my way of doing it.
You know, it's just habitual iswhat you're tapping into.
I think.
And so I say, you're right.
It probably is not natural thatthere's some situation where
you're invited to someone'soffice and you're going to go
sit in a conference room andyou're putting on clothes that
(42:37):
you wouldn't wear at home.
You're dressed up for work in asuit with a tie, but you don't
wear that at home.
None of that's natural either,but you do it.
Why?
Because you know it's effective,because you're working the
gears.
And so I always say, it is gonnafeel unnatural at first for you
to change what you always do.
The same way that like, youknow, my husband loves to like,
(42:57):
move, move, reorganize thehouse.
I always get annoyed at firstbecause I just, where's my
little bowl for my keys?
But in a week, it's fine.
Wherever you put it, I'm goingto find it.
I'm going to get used to it.
You're just used to this way ofbeing, but I would say, ask
yourself the question of, whatis this way of being costing me?
(43:17):
And is it worth doing some workto find new choices that I can
make?
Jason Frazell (43:23):
Brilliant.
Mike, I want to thank you forcoming on for the second time,
and I want to give the audiencea little shout out to you, and
then we'll, we'll wrap and talkabout the book, we've been
talking about the book, we'regoing to talk about the book,
and so now, Mike has been doingsomething really fun, for those
of us who are film andtelevision and awards people,
awards season people, and Icertainly am, you've been
(43:44):
critiquing speeches.
And you do this on Instagram andit's really fun.
I want to ask you, and maybewe'll tag this person when I put
this on social.
What's your favorite speech ofthis award season so far?
Ooh, of this award season.
This is improv.
He had no idea this question wascoming.
Mike Ganino (44:03):
One of my favorite ones that I've, I've been
talking about in the, I've donea bunch of, uh, TV news talking
about these speeches and what wecan learn from them.
Jason Frazell (44:12):
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (44:13):
And my version of critiquing is always taking
something that worked andexplaining why it worked because
I think that's more helpful, youknow, it's way more
Jason Frazell (44:18):
helpful.
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (44:19):
One of the ones that I think has not gotten a
lot of attention but is reallygreat is Jesse Eisenberg
accepting the Independent SpiritAward for the movie he wrote and
directed called A Real Pain.
This is the movie where you'reseeing Kieran Culkin get a bunch
of, um, I think supporting actorwins for it.
Yeah, supporting actor, um, mmhmm.
And so the movie is written byJesse Eisenberg, who has been,
(44:42):
you know, an actor performer along time, but a writer, and he
got up there to accept hisaward, and he could have just
gone through and listed a thankyou, you know, a lot of, a lot
of execs might do this at an endof the year speech or an awards
dinner.
Let me list all the information.
Let me list all the thank yous.
What Jesse did was interesting.
He did something different.
He said years ago, I was in amovie with Emma Stone, Emma
(45:03):
Stone, of course, huge actress,her career's blown up.
They were in a movie calledZombieland.
with Woody Harrelson years agoas teenagers.
It's
Jason Frazell (45:11):
a fun movie.
And he said,
Mike Ganino (45:12):
over the years, she has stayed my friend as her star
has blown up.
You know, she's a huge star andshe's one of the only people he
would do writing.
He would write on McSweeney andthese different sites where
people could write.
He would write.
And he's like, Emma all the timewould text me all the time and
say, Oh, this line is reallyfunny.
This way you open this story wasso great.
(45:33):
He's like, my mom didn't even dothat.
Emma Stone kept doing that overthe years.
And when I had this scriptready, she was the first person
I wanted to read it.
She is of course, the producer,the producer, she helped make
it.
That's so much more meaningfulbecause he gave us context to
their relationship versus just,thank you, Emma Stone for your
friendship and being a producer.
That's been one of my favorites.
(45:53):
Cause it's not getting attentionfor the right reasons.
Yeah.
We can all use that.
We can all use that.
Jason Frazell (45:58):
Yeah.
And to go back to your point,you could film that.
You could film Emma walking intoa bookstore or reading something
and texting Jesse.
You could totally picture thatin a TV show or a movie.
That's so brilliant.
Yeah.
And he called her what hisgodmother or something, or he
made a funny comment about her.
It was great.
Mike Ganino (46:16):
Yeah, it's, it's, it was fantastic and her
reaction was so beautifulbecause she clearly didn't
expect him to reference all theway back to Zombieland, which is
one of both of their firstmovies.
Um, it just was such a momentthat was simple, you know, so it
could get overlooked easily, butI think it's really, it makes a
lot of sense for your, yourfolks listening here who are.
(46:38):
Giving thank yous, thankingpeople for their, you know, in a
weekly meeting, let's say thatyou're doing a end of the end of
the week, weekly meeting, andyou want to thank a team member
for something above and beyond,give it context.
I used to say this all the timewith, um, when I was in the
restaurant industry and I wouldteach our managers, I owned a
restaurant company and I wouldsay, don't say, Hey, you know, I
(46:59):
want to give a shout out toJason, like great job this week,
team member of the week.
It means nothing.
Nobody knows what to replicate.
Jason Frazell (47:07):
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (47:07):
Versus saying, you know, I walked into the shift
last week and everyone, it waschaotic.
It was one of those days.
Y'all know what it's like.
Everyone was in the weeds,racing around, there were fires
going everywhere and you allwere working your butts off to
make it work, manning yourstations and getting it through.
And then I kept seeing oneperson.
Leaning over and saying, what doyou need help with?
What do you need?
(47:27):
What can I get for you?
And I just want to call out thatbehavior from Jason and say,
thank you.
That is what teamwork is.
Let's all get Jason around moremeaningful, more meaningful.
Jason Frazell (47:36):
And also one of the things, uh, we'll wrap with
this.
When you're talking to leaders,they say, I want to be a better
leader.
I want to be a moreinspirational leader, which is a
lot of what communication is.
That also is literally tellingother people what behavior will
have you get acknowledged andwill help you advance your
career versus, Oh, did Mike andJason go out for drinks and they
shared some dirty little secretand now they like, they're just
(47:59):
like buddies and he's justshouting him out.
No, like here's what Mike,here's the actual thing that
Mike did.
That made a difference for ourbusiness.
Mike, this is brilliant.
Want to wrap today by sharingabout Mike's book.
So Mike's book is out now.
It is out in paperback.
It is out on.
It is out on Kindle.
(48:19):
It is brilliant.
I don't buy many books anymoreand I bought yours because I
wanted to read it and mark it upbecause this is a topic that I
love and I'm so happy for youthat you were able to come out
with this because I know youbring such a wealth of you bring
such a wealth of experience fromthe different contexts that I
know you in coupled with you getto work with these brilliant
people who are already greatcommunicators.
That's the fun thing.
(48:39):
And so I would imagine you'realways absorbing from them.
And then we get to experiencethat wisdom in a book that we
all can go out and go grab inthe bookshelf or.
or grab from your favorite localbookstore.
So thank you, Mike.
Thanks for putting out the goodwork in the world.
And thanks for doing, thanks fordoing the good work to make a
difference with communicationbecause so much communication is
so darn boring.
So boring.
(48:59):
And for those of us with a shortattention span, I appreciate it
greatly.
Uh, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks, Mike.
Speaker (49:09):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Talking to
Cool People with Jason Frizzell.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please tell your friends, follow
us on Instagram and Facebook,and give us a shout out, or take
a moment to leave a review oniTunes.
If something from today'sepisode piqued your interest and
you'd like to connect, email usat podcast at jasonfrizzell.
(49:32):
com.
We love hearing from ourlisteners because you're cool
people too.
Hey everybody.
This is a special one.
My guest on the show today isthe one and only Mike Ganino and
Mike and I were just catchingup.
Mike, you were on in 2020.
What's happened since 2020?
This is going to be outWednesday, I think March 3rd,
2025.
So in five years, what's reallyhappened?
And we were just laughing.
We're like, we had a pandemicand we each had an additional
(00:35):
human enter our lives.
Mike's done a small thing.
He's written a book, which isone of the things we're going to
talk about today.
And.
I told Mike he's two fifths ofthe way to his jacket, his
Cernit live jacket.
Some of my other guests, likeSheila, Steven Drum, who you
know has been on a few times.
Tony's saying, so Mike, we'll,we'll get your, we'll get your
jacket primed up.
I invited Mike here for a numberof reasons.
(00:59):
One, he's just a great, greatperson.
Two, he's written a fabulousbook that I got a chance to
read, and it's a topic that Ilove.
It's about speaking and morethan just speaking, making a
scene in any space you're in,which is a really important
thing.
And Mike, I told you this, we'regoing to do something we've
never done before.
And Mike, you're going to givethe audience something to do
right now.
(01:19):
And then Mike and I are going tosit back and we're going to
shoot the tea and then we'llcome back to you.
In other words, we're going topause for one second.
So Mike, what would you like theaudience to do right now?
And this is only for those ofyou who want to be a better
communicator.
So if you don't care about that,don't worry about this.
Otherwise, Mike, what do youwant them to do?
Mike Ganino (01:35):
Gosh, and if you don't care about that, call me
because I need to convince youwhy you need to care about that.
Because no matter what you wantto do in the world, your ability
to communicate it is important.
Okay, this also is the way thebook starts, by the way.
It's like kind of the mostunhinged introduction.
The very first words in thebook, besides the dedication of
my daughter, are literally thistask.
There's no soft open.
There's no little warm hugs.
(01:56):
It is this task.
Listener, take your phone.
Open the camera app, set it tovideo mode, prop it up to face
you or to not face you.
If you don't want to look atyourself, turn it the other way.
So you don't look at yourself,hit record and spend the next 60
seconds introducing yourself.
(02:16):
You could explain a personalmission, why you do what you do.
You could share a specificexample or instance that you had
to persuade someone tounderstand your mission or your
work.
You could describe an experiencethat has taught you a lesson
about the way that youcommunicate.
Your ideas, whatever it is, 60seconds, hit record, we'll
(02:36):
pause, this is weird for a lot,for uh, for radio, for, you
know, for radio, for recording,like, Do do do do do do
Jason Frazell (02:44):
do do Do that, we'll be here waiting.
Right here waiting for you.
Oh, yeah.
Well, Mike, the good thing aboutthis is if they're listening to
this on their phone, theyprobably need to pause the
podcast to do this.
I know.
Mike Ganino (02:59):
You know, it's funny at the end of the book,
one of the very last things Isay in the, in the, in the
closing chapter, not theappendix is, Hey, so, you know,
it's time to record your nextvideo.
And then I'm like, you didrecord a video at the beginning,
right?
Cause like, If you've gonethrough this book and done the
work, I want you to see how muchbetter you are now, because
video is the greatest tool to dothat.
Now, for everyone who just didthat, or if you didn't do that,
(03:20):
and you have a video recently,and you're like, what do I do?
We hate watching ourselves,Jason.
We It's
Jason Frazell (03:25):
awful.
Mike Ganino (03:26):
Well, I don't.
I enjoy it a lot, but that's me.
Um, we hate, because I'm alwayslearning.
I want to watch it say, was Ieffective?
Did it do what it needed to do?
That's what I'm watching for.
My, my four year old daughterloves to watch herself just
because she's She's a Leo sun inastrology and she just loves to
watch herself perform on video.
She goes, let me see me.
Let me see me in my phone allthe time.
(03:46):
So
Jason Frazell (03:46):
good.
Mike Ganino (03:47):
But when I'm watching video back and what I
want everyone to do with thosevideos they had that they just
did, or with the ones they'll doshortly, or one that you
recently did, watch it back.
And I want you to turn the audioall the way off and just watch.
How did you communicate?
What was your face saying?
What was your body languagesaying?
What was the takeaway fromthere?
You know, now flip it over andturn the audio on.
(04:10):
Don't watch yourself and justlisten, just listen.
Okay.
What's the takeaway there?
How was that?
And then finally do a third timewatch and listen together.
And what I hope happens forpeople that read the book is
that you learn not to watchyourself and say, Oh, I hate it.
I never want to do that again.
But you learn to watch yourselfand say, Ooh.
(04:31):
Now I know more choices I couldmake.
The choice I made in that momentwasn't effective.
It wasn't clear.
Let me make a new choice.
When I see someone on stage, orlike on video, who's not landing
it, I know two things.
One, they don't watch themselvesback on video at all.
Even on social media, they justdon't watch their stuff.
(04:53):
They don't listen to their ownpodcast episodes ever, so they
don't have the ability toimprove.
They just keep putting out stuffwithout improving.
And two, I think.
A lot of times I get texts allthe time from people like, Oh my
gosh, you won't believe thisperson speaking, they're awful.
My response is always, Wow, Ifeel so bad for them that they
didn't know they had otherchoices available to them.
Jason Frazell (05:16):
That is such a brilliant mindset shift that
it's all just about the choice.
And we're going to go back here,Mike, now that the audience is
like, who the heck is this guytelling me to click on my phone
to do this?
Let's talk a little bit aboutMike and I'll give you, you
know, like what I know of youand who you are in the world.
(05:37):
You're a, you're a, you're animprover by trade.
It's one of the many thingsyou're trained in improvisation.
You've directed Ted talks.
You train speakers around theworld, keynote speakers, people
that are doing businesspresentations.
You're an actor.
And you're a two time author.
The first book was not about,not about what we're going to
talk about today.
And you are now an author herein 2025.
(06:00):
And the name of the book, whichis brilliant, you need to get
it, Make a Scene, Storytelling,Stage Presence, and the Art of
Being Unforgettable in EverySpotlight.
Mike Ganino (06:09):
That
Jason Frazell (06:10):
is it.
It's a little bit of anintroduction.
You also said, because this showis all about people, you're also
a dad of a four year old, justlike me.
Also a dad of a four year old.
You're a husband.
And you are a Californian.
I am all of those things.
You are all of those things,amongst many other things.
So Mike, what else do you thinkwould be important for the
(06:30):
audience to know?
Mike Ganino (06:32):
You know, one of the things I, I really tried to
talk about too in the book, soit wasn't just like a, here's a
book on presentation skills andget rid of this and do this.
I tried to like, there's alittle memoir moments in there.
But I think the thing that's, Ifind helpful for myself to
understand about me is I am aperson who deeply, deeply
(06:52):
believe since I was a little kidbecause I grew up in poverty
with teen parents, other side ofthe tracks, trailer park, all of
the things I really believe thatour ability to change our
circumstances.
is based on how we communicate.
I truly believe that.
Like if we want to change theworld for sure, but if we want
(07:15):
to change our own circumstancesand those for our kids, a large
percentage of the success rateof that is dependent on our
communication skills and whatour communication skills are
costing us.
And if we can learn to make newchoices, we can make our way out
of a lot of situations.
Jason Frazell (07:37):
I want to give you and the audience a very
small, quite meaningless exampleof this, but it's true.
For me, we're currently sellinga, an old vehicle on Facebook
Marketplace.
And I had somebody that I thinkwould be a good buyer and they
just blasted me like there wasno warm up, no lead.
And it was like, Hey, does it dothis?
(07:57):
Does it do that?
Does it do that?
Does it do that?
Like a list of questions.
And I'm like, nope.
Like, and, and, and, and even assomething as small as that of
just a little bit of a way to.
Hey, I'm interested in the car,the warm up.
And I, I just, and I told mywife that she goes, that's fine.
I'm like, I don't want tointeract with this person just
on how it feels.
And, but the thing of it is, andwhat you're saying, and what we
know to be true, that person,there's probably nothing wrong,
(08:20):
there's probably, they don'teither know, or they don't,
maybe they don't care, but it'snot like, they're like, I want
to be perceived this way.
And that's one of the majorproblems, and one of the things
you talk about in the book isperception, reality, intention
versus impact, and how a lot ofit comes through the choice.
So Mike, we're gonna talk about,for this first episode, which
(08:43):
you'll be back on soon to be,this book is great and there's a
lot in here.
Let's first talk about some ofthe common misconceptions.
about communicating in anyformat.
I know, like really your breadand butter is directing keynote
speakers and such, but you do alot of work with businesses as
well.
Executives that are presentingto a board or people raising
venture capital.
(09:04):
What are some of themisconceptions that you probably
grew up with?
And I probably did too aroundpublic speaking and how to be a
great communicator.
Mike Ganino (09:13):
There's the classic ones, right?
The like, the bad advice peoplegive you, like we tell people
things like, don't say, um,well.
That is just a restrictivebehavior and saying, um, or
like, or something happens forreasons.
So let's address the issuethere.
And most research research showspeople don't care.
(09:34):
Like I say, um, a lot, it's ifit becomes distracting and if
you're using it as a crutchbecause you're feeling a certain
way, then it could becomeunhelpful.
But the solve there is not tofocus on not saying, um, it's to
replace it with, well, what dowe do instead?
The same way with.
How a lot of body language onstage is taught.
We teach people like, Oh, haveyour hands in a, in a pose like
(09:56):
this.
And it's like, what are wedoing?
The steeple, the steeple, theguy, the
Jason Frazell (10:01):
Jeff go, the Jeff Goldblum apartment.
com steeple, like sopretentious.
Mike Ganino (10:06):
And again, that is a choice someone makes when they
want to feel pretentious, whenthey want to feel guarded in a
way and far from someone.
So why would you make that onstage if that's not what you
want people to feel?
So we teach all of these, here'swhat to do with your hands,
don't gesticulate, all of thesethings that are not actually
helpful.
And Then we have speechstructure, right?
So then we tell people youshould have an introduction.
(10:28):
I saw this yesterday, Jason, ina professional speaking group,
somebody said, I'm working on myfirst speech.
What tips do you have?
A speech should have anintroduction, three supporting
points and a close.
Sure.
I guess.
I don't know.
But like, I don't know if that'sit.
That's like a five paragraphessay from high school.
(10:49):
We have bad storytelling advicewhere we say things like stories
have beginnings, middles, andends.
And I think everything does.
If I Walk away, like everythingis a beginning, middle and end.
So how is that helpful at all?
And then we have storytellingstructures and frameworks that
we teach of like, Oh, we needexposition.
(11:10):
And then we need, um, incitingincident.
And then we need a climax andthen we need a resolution.
And it's like, what kind of,what are we, what kind of story
are we telling that has climaxesin it?
What is going on here?
Jason Frazell (11:21):
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (11:21):
And it isn't helpful for what we're actually
trying to do, which is toconnect with other people.
And so.
I think, and of course, thenthere's always the, the goofy
things like, imagine theaudience naked, which sounds
like a non consensual crime, bythe way, so bad, um, you know,
we have all these bad advicethat don't actually help us do
the thing we're trying to do,which is to connect and
(11:42):
communicate with the people infront of us.
Jason Frazell (11:44):
Yeah, thanks.
Yeah, there, I'm going to addanother one to this is people
that talk faster, telling themthey need to slow down.
Right?
As a somebody who's had to workon this for myself.
And I do a lot of work, youknow, like corporate trainings.
A lot of people speak fast andthey get nervous.
(12:04):
What's the very natural thingthat's going to happen if I go,
Hey, Mike, don't do the thingthat you know, you're very
reliable to do and you'renervous.
And then you tell people, Oh,you need to slow down and all
they do, and then you ask them,Hey, what does that do for you?
Well, it just gets me up in myhead and then I start to speed
up anyway, versus take a pause.
Like take a breath, like these,like all these acting and
(12:26):
speaking things.
There's just so much.
It's not, I wouldn't say it'snecessarily bad advice.
It's all good in principle.
It just doesn't work in themoment.
I think is the, one of the bigproblems that people have.
It's like all advice.
It's not all helpful.
Yeah, like don't say, um, andthen you say, um, you go, Oh, I
just said, um, I guess, whichis, which you have to ask
yourself now,
Mike Ganino (12:46):
what is the reason not to say, um, and can I focus
on that reason the same way withsomebody who's speaking so fast,
just so they can get through itbecause they're so nervous.
The answer to that is to one.
Change the way you prep to inthose moments to have some
reliable tools to calm you downand three to stay connected to
(13:09):
who you're talking to becauseyou'll start to see their face
and you'll start to say, Ooh, Ishould slow down.
I should speed up.
I should pause.
I should check in because we doall of that pretty naturally
anyway, one on one.
So what we need to replicate isthat level of intimacy when
we're with groups.
Jason Frazell (13:28):
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (13:28):
And, and focusing on the what not to do is just
not helpful.
Jason Frazell (13:31):
Yeah.
What not?
Yeah.
Let's talk about.
I love this.
Well, I love this framework thatyou have.
I love frameworks.
It's especially for a top, well,especially for Pete and, you
know, as an author, especiallyfor people that this field, this
can feel like a reallyintimidating topic, especially
for people that.
Hey, I want to be a speaker orI've been told I need to be a
(13:54):
better communicator at work andthey go, what's next?
I'm sure you've worked withpeople.
They get, they get the feelingyou need to be a better
communicator at work.
And the next question should be,what do you mean?
They're like, we don't know you,or you need to work on your
executive presence.
Right.
What does that mean?
I don't know.
So I really love that you camewith the framework around the
five stave language, stave,stage languages as a way to have
(14:18):
people think about these fivedifferent areas.
And some of these people don'tthink about, I'm sure.
I know I don't always thinkabout these as well.
So let's talk briefly about eachof these and why they're
important in the overall contextof, being the best communicator
you can be.
And also, I want to set this forthe audience.
Everything we're talking aboutis also being the most authentic
Mike and the most authenticJason, not a robot that sounds
(14:40):
like your favorite speaker,because nobody likes to listen
to those people.
And we all know those people.
Mike Ganino (14:46):
Yeah.
Jason Frazell (14:46):
So, so Mike, let's talk about the five stave,
staves, stage languages.
What do we need to know aboutthem?
Mike Ganino (14:53):
These came up for me when I, I was a speaker
myself and I was teaching likestorytelling for leaders and
more like, how do you tell astory about your company and
that kind of thing and talkingabout company culture and pieces
like that.
How do you do new hireorientation more engagingly?
And I had a client who wanted meto come back.
And work with their executiveteam to help them be better
presenters, because I spoke attheir conference for all their
(15:15):
general managers.
It was a hotel group and at theend, so did all their executives
or chief marketing officer,chief HR, yada, yada.
And they said.
Everyone remembered these littlestories and they loved you.
And then our executives wereboring, not engaging.
It, it lowers your trust level.
If you're not a greatcommunicator, it isn't just that
(15:37):
you don't gain the benefits ofbeing a good communicator.
It's that it can cost youbecause people say, I didn't
trust them.
I didn't like them.
They didn't seem like they caredabout us.
All of those things can happenfrom that.
And so they had me come back into work with their executive
team to prep them.
And at this point it's 2015 or16.
I was a couple of years intospeaking.
(15:57):
And so they said, Hey, can youdo this?
And I said, Oh yes, absolutely.
Yeah.
I know exactly what to do.
And then I was like, I don'tknow how to do this, but what do
I do?
And at first I did that thing wenormally do of like, well, let
me see what, what do otherpeople say you should do to
teach public speaking?
And all of it was awful.
It was all awful advice.
And I thought none of this isgoing to do.
None of this is what I'm doingwhen I'm up there.
So what am I doing?
(16:19):
And I realized all of thesethings that I'd learned as a
performer doing sketch comedyand theater, one person shows
improv in Chicago, but also as awriter, writing shows for myself
and other people, and also as adirector, directing other
people's shows, directing, um,sketch shows and things like
that, that the things that I.
(16:41):
Sitting in an audience, youknow, a lot of public speaking
coaches are thinking about thespeaker on stage and how to
change you, what you need to dodifferent to be a good speaker.
I really act like a director andI sit in the audience's seat and
I say from the audience'sperspective, what are they
looking at and what are thetools?
And so, you know, initially withthis first hotel client, I
(17:04):
didn't.
Come up with the five stagelanguages right away, but the
early origins of it did andeventually it was oh These are
the five levers.
These are the five places.
We can make choices on stagethat impact an audience It's a
nice
Jason Frazell (17:19):
love that
Mike Ganino (17:20):
day.
Um, the first one is verbalverbal is largely about the
choices We make with the wordswe say so, how are we telling a
story?
How are we putting together our?
Bits, how can we be funny?
How can we?
Package this so that theaudience is on the edge of their
seat so that we're leveragingall the, you know, a lot of
times we hear you should tell astory and we have these bad
(17:43):
storytelling frameworks and thenwe see people telling stories,
we're like, well, it wasn't agood story, so I don't know.
Did it help them because.
It isn't looking at the rightelements of storytelling.
It's like we copy the wrongparts, right?
Like, ooh, we should do exactlywhat the story did because
that's why it worked, but we'reignoring why it actually worked.
And so in that section, Iintroduced the idea that what
(18:05):
we're trying to do is Reallycontrol the dopamine for an
audience verbally, because whatwe're wanting is this
anticipation of reward.
Like when we watch a TV show, aplay, read a book, even like I'm
such a, I was leaving a bookreview of a fiction book
recently.
And I was like, the pacing ofthis book is chef's kiss.
(18:26):
It's delicious because it, younever got to the point where you
thought, God, where's thisgoing?
It was always like, I can't waitto hear what happens next.
An example of the verballanguage would be, I could say,
I used to work in an office inManhattan and it was one of
those offices, very tallbuilding, very intimidating.
I took the elevator up to the87th floor.
(18:48):
It was all glass conferencerooms.
And so one day I had a meetingthere.
Okay, cool.
Not that interesting to seewhere's this going.
Or I could start and say, I'msitting with my hands on my
knees, worried that my jeans aregoing to be soaked with sweat,
as I stare at the rest of thebuildings below, bur uh,
billowing smoke out, and I seeher walk in the office.
(19:09):
It doesn't help my hand sweat asshe gets closer to the
conference room.
Now that's not even a goodexample, but people are like,
Ooh, why is he nervous?
Why is he in this building?
Why is he wearing jeans?
Who is the woman coming into theoffice?
Why is he scared?
And so we can tell stories andwe can put together our speeches
and our presentations in a waythat gets the audience.
(19:30):
Constantly dopamine triggered towant to know what happens next.
So that's the verbal, that's theverbal one.
And in that section of the book,I really talk a lot about
storytelling.
Um, once you've got the wordsdown, you got to say them.
So the second one is voice.
It's the vocal image.
And this is really something Ifind a lot of people have never.
(19:53):
Thought about it makes sense.
Right.
The first part, verbal your,your words and your story makes
sense, but vocal, we forget onpodcasts, on video, on
presentations, on webinars, andkeynote speeches, it is largely.
A physical job, right?
Cause your voice is physical.
(20:13):
It is muscles and air movingaround and turning ideas into
sounds sounds into words.
Okay.
But we often don't think aboutall of the choices we can make
with our voice.
We can speed up, which iseffective if you want an
audience to feel like it'smoving very quick or to Rattle
(20:35):
off something like and Icouldn't believe that she was
talking to me She was looking atme everything in the room was
going like that can help anaudience feel something we can
Slow things down when we wantpeople to tune in To listen, we
can go into this place in ourvoice so we can play with all of
these levers in our voice, butmost of us are unaware of the
(20:56):
choices we could make.
And so we end up playing thesame kind of key on the piano
all the time.
Like we have all these keys andwe play the same two because we
don't realize.
Oh, there's an impact to the wayI sound, to the way I'm
breathing and how that comes outof my mouth and creates meaning
for someone.
So voice is that second one.
(21:17):
And there's all these littlelevers we can pull.
And in the book, actually,there's this fun, like bonus
half chapter on the voice one.
That's all about thesearchetypes that people fall into
vocally, which are useful.
If we leverage all of them, butnot if we get stuck.
So like the coach archetype,you've probably seen this in
speakers where they get up thereand they are really just trying
(21:39):
to get people to understand,yeah, this matters.
We have to go.
We get the intellect who likesto really pontificate and they
speak a little slower.
All of those are good ifleveraged together, but getting
stuck in one of them could costyou impact.
Okay, so now brilliant.
We've got our words.
We've turned those words intosounds that have meaning to an
(22:02):
audience.
Now we've got our bodies.
The third stage language is ourphysicality, which is another
place.
I think a lot of people just donot spend time thinking about
maybe they've gone and done someacting training.
So they think of like blockingthe speech of like, I'm going to
do an action like this, but whatI'm talking about here, that is
(22:23):
there, that is helpful, but howdoes your proximity impact an
audience member?
How close you are to them.
If you're telling a story aboutgiving your baby a bath.
I do this in my talk.
It's the closing of like akeynote.
I deliver.
I talk about her being in theNICU because my, my daughter was
born, uh, at 28 weeks.
So she was very, very smallpreemie.
(22:44):
And I talk about kneeling and Ikneel on stage.
I get to the lip of the stage,very intimate, very close to the
audience.
If I did it further back, itdoesn't have the same feeling,
Jason Frazell (22:54):
but I get
Mike Ganino (22:54):
right up on the lip of the stage.
I lean down on one knee, Okay.
And I put my little hand up andI say, she's holding my hand.
She's two pounds.
She's holding my little finger.
And I remember in that moment,I'm not a religious person, but
I prayed to, uh, I think I'd saysomething like I prayed to God,
Buddha and lady Gaga, justhoping I hit all the bases
usually gets a laugh.
Um, so then I'm holding herfinger and I say, I'm never
(23:17):
going to leave you.
Yada, yada.
Then I replay that scene in aminute.
I get back on my knee.
It's her taking a bath.
And me talking to her in herbath with her little finger.
So that physicality of meleaning down creates intimacy
with the audience.
Right?
So sometimes people will comeand say, Oh, people didn't
laugh.
People didn't cry.
And they're focused just on thewords they're saying the verbal
(23:39):
language, but our physicalitycan tell people how to feel
hopping off stage and gettingright up with an audience
member.
So good.
And you do so much really highlevel training, Jason, you
probably see this all the time,all the time, knowing how to
Jason Frazell (23:51):
use the whole room.
I want to, I want to ask yousomething on the physical piece
specifically, you do a lot ofwork with people on virtual as
well.
And so do I.
Yes.
And, and, you know, Mike and Ihere, even in this interview,
you all are not seeing Mike, butMike is leaning in.
He's moving back.
He's moving a little bit leftand right using his space.
(24:13):
This is a question I get all thetime.
He's like, this all soundsgreat, but I don't speak on a
lot of people.
And you probably hear this allthe time when you're working
with companies.
This is all nice, but I don'tspeak on stages.
My, my thing is I do it in ateam meeting, or maybe I'm at a
salesperson.
How does the physical, and Iknow we're going to get into
some other parts of this that,you know, cause everybody can
understand the verbal and thevocal.
(24:33):
You can do that all the time.
Let's talk about physical as itrelates to virtual environments.
Mike Ganino (24:38):
Yeah.
Well, and I'm going to say twothings really quick.
One is.
If someone's watching andsaying, Oh, I'm not on a big
stage at the lip of the stage,talking about my infant
daughter, Mike, I don't needthat.
Great.
If you're in a presentation withfive people, where you sit,
where you stand, when you standup, if you lean and put your
hands down on the desk, thoseall send emotional triggers to
(25:00):
them.
And we don't think that all thetime I'll work with executives
or salespeople who are goinginto physical rooms still, but
they're not on stage.
It's a meeting room and they donot think about where they
stand, where they sit.
They don't think about any ofthose pieces.
Um, even down, this is a reallyeasy one.
This is a little pro tip beforeI go to virtual.
If you are the personpresenting, sit closest to the
(25:22):
TV in the room, wherever the,wherever the slides are gonna
be, or the, whatever you'relooking at.
Because then when you'retalking, the audience can look
at you in the screen.
I was, I was coaching someonethe other day, their sales team,
and they had learned fromsomeone to sit on the other side
of the room, so they could talktowards the slides.
And it was like Now what you'remaking the audience do is left,
(25:43):
right, left, right, the wholetime, versus sit by it so you
can always see them, even Whenthe audience is watching the
slides, you could see theaudience.
You could start to read.
I think they're getting it.
I don't think they're gettingit.
She looks uncomfortable.
Such a great tip for physicalityin a room.
Again, imagine someone standingup gently, leaning their hands
(26:04):
down like, Hey, we've got to getto work.
Let's get going here.
You ready?
It sends a signal.
So even if you're not on a bigstage, physicality matters, even
in boardrooms, all handsmeetings, virtually so many
people get stuck.
Jason, you're so right.
Get stuck with like looking likea hostage and it's like only
good.
The, the, the, the frame, theway they frame their camera is
(26:28):
just like above the nipples totheir head, right?
So it's like, you're just like adisembodied head speaking.
Your hands are below you.
So if you do gesticulate, it'slike, what are you doing down
there?
Like what's happeningunderneath?
Cause you can't see them.
Yes.
It's like, what's happening?
A lot of times they don'tunderstand the angle of the
camera.
(26:48):
So there'll be looking like,yes, daddy.
Hello.
Or there'll be looking down likean overlord.
All of that impacts how we feeloutside of all the camera
framing and that stuff.
We have that alone, but littletricks, right?
Like so far on this podcast,people are listening, but I am
using my hands.
(27:08):
Yeah.
Same as I would in person.
I am connecting to the camera.
And, and gesturing to it, if Iwas doing something and I wanted
to say that, like, you know, inthe beginning you asked me the
question of what are the tipsthat people get wrong.
Let's say that I said somethinglike, Ooh, I've got three and a
bonus one that I don't tellanybody.
The first one is this, thesecond one is it, the third one
(27:30):
is this.
Okay.
Now what I'm doing for theaudience is listening.
I'm pretending like I'm about totell a secret.
So I'm going to look over myshoulder on camera, like, okay.
So here's this one.
I never tell anybody and I'mgoing to lean forward maybe and
say, okay, so come here.
Here's the deal.
I'm going to change my voice.
All of that.
I have access to all of that onvideo.
So why wouldn't I do it?
(27:52):
But we don't think that we thinkI'm going to sit here.
I did a, um, Instagram postrecently.
I was in Portland and I wasdoing a, I was there for a
speaking gig, a workshop onstorytelling, but then I had a
TV interview to do.
And in my hotel room, I took.
You know, the ironing boardstacked a suitcase on top, put a
(28:14):
trash can on top of that, thenmy laptop and camera on top of
that so that I could get a goodangle that I could be standing
up and that I could havelighting on me.
So I didn't look on national TVlike I was in a relocate witness
relocation program because I'vedone all this signals, right?
Because it signals to theaudience.
(28:34):
We tell the audience how tofeel.
Jason Frazell (28:36):
I've got a couple things to add here, things that
I've seen.
One, the hostage is one look,the other look I call is the Kid
at the adult Thanksgiving table,and they're taking up like a
third of the screen.
And you, and I, and I see reallysenior people sometimes doing
this.
I'm like, why would you do that?
And they, and they have like ablank wall behind them or
(28:59):
something else that's just notvisually appealing.
And, that's the first one.
The second thing that I see alot is the, that I, that I
really, really hate is peoplethat have moving virtual
backgrounds.
Why would you ever do that toyour audience?
Moving?
(29:19):
Moving.
So, Zoom has moving virtualbackgrounds.
And sometimes companies willcreate, and they're almost like
a meme, or a gif, but they're avirtual background, and every
now and again I'll go into aplace, people use that, I said,
don't ever do that again, it'sjust bad.
Like, we under, we understand invirtual you may not have a great
space to work in, you may betraveling, you may have, you
(29:41):
know, kids running around behindyou, that's cool, blur your
background, whatever.
But some of these things you seeand, and I'll, I'll say to
people, as we, the training workI do, we talk about this, I'll
say, there's just no reason,unless you're just not paying
attention.
Yeah.
Not paying attention.
It is, it is.
And then the last one I'll sayis the hostage is the total
backlight where you end uplooking, I call it the witness
(30:03):
protection.
Mike Ganino (30:04):
Yes.
Where, where you're just like asilhouette.
Jason Frazell (30:08):
And so, and, and so, yeah, I'll say this, Mike,
for, for everybody listening issome of these things you may go,
Hey, I'm never, I don't want tobe a speaker.
I don't, you know, like my jobis that, but these things are
things that all people should bedoing, like just straight up, if
you want to own your impact,make a, so yeah.
Thanks for all sharing allthose.
I love the kid at theThanksgiving day table,
Thanksgiving table look.
(30:29):
You're like, we know you're asix foot man.
Why are you taking up like onethird of the screen?
Mike Ganino (30:34):
And what is the impact of that, that the
audience wouldn't say theaudience doesn't know sometimes
why they feel how they feel, butthey leave feeling a certain
way.
And so it's so funny too,because our first episode when
you had me on was in 2020 and in2020 I had a whole, I had a huge
year lined up of going in anddoing a ton of workshops with,
(30:56):
uh, one of my big clients was abig financial.
Like a hedge fund company.
And I was going to go all overGermany, Australia, it was going
all over to work with theirteams on presentation and story
skills.
COVID happened.
Yeah.
We know, we know,
Jason Frazell (31:10):
we know where this, we know where this story
is going.
Mike Ganino (31:12):
And I thankfully have a good contract, so they
weren't going to get their moneyback, but we could do lots of
creative things.
And so I was trying to help themout and I, to see like, how
could I still help?
So I called my contact and Isaid, Hey, are they all, how are
they doing their jobs?
Because they used to travel orthey would bring clients into
New York or to Mountain View orto Hong Kong and meet them
(31:34):
there.
How are they doing it?
And she's like, over Zoom, and Isaid, do you guys record it?
She's like, yeah.
I said, can you send me acouple?
She did.
And I was like, Oh.
Well, this is how I earn outthis money because over and
over, I was like, these peopleare asking governments, like
they're the kind of people thatwould go in and tell like the
country of Australia, how theyshould be investing their, their
(31:58):
governmental, like the versionof 501k essentially, what should
they be investing in to the tuneof like 5 billion and it
Jason Frazell (32:05):
was government pension stuff.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (32:07):
Yes.
And I was like.
The camp, the angles look weak,the lighting is awful, you could
fix a lot with lighting, the,all of it's awful.
And I was like, it is costingthem, Gravitas, it's costing
them deals.
So here's my proposal for you.
And I, I recouped like 400, 000in revenue that would have just,
eventually I would have earnedit, but I wasn't going to earn
(32:29):
it in 2020.
Cause They were going to paywhen I did the work.
So at some point I would have,but I was able to still move
forward with all of that bycoaching and teaching these
people how to do what theyneeded to do.
And they were, again, sometimesit was one person presenting to
a group of five, or it wasteams.
I worked a lot with like, Hey,if there's going to be three of
(32:49):
you presenting So how do you dothat in a way that feels good
and natural and uh, it reallymakes a big difference.
I mean, you know this, you seethis every day.
Jason Frazell (32:59):
I need to ask you, Mike, did you, did you have
an Arnold Schwarzenegger twinstype contract for that?
Where you said, I'm going to,I'm going to reduce my upfront
fee, but I'm going to take apercentage of all the ways you
increase this thing.
Like the famous story about whenhe did that movie, that was the,
that's how he got into hiscomedy, comedy years and Jack
Nicholson and Batman as well.
Yeah.
You're like, Hey, I'll just takea percentage of your profits.
(33:20):
It's fine.
Yeah, I should have.
Next time.
So we've got, so, so far for theaudience, we've got verbal.
It's what you say.
We've got vocal.
It's how you say it.
We've got physical, how are youusing your body, how you're
using your body language, yourface, one thing you need to say,
your face, how are you, youknow, I, I say this a lot, if
(33:40):
you go into a meeting room andyou say, I'm really excited to
be here, we should believe thatyou're really excited to be
there.
Yeah.
Come with a, come with a nice,um, resting bitch face as you
say that, or, I'm so happy
Mike Ganino (33:51):
you're all here, but you look, yeah.
I called it in the book, calledit resting bro face, resting bro
face.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the, the fourth one isvisual.
So what are the visual elementsyou have to you?
So this is in a virtual setting.
This is your background.
It's of course your lighting.
It's even down to, this isreally, so right now we're doing
this podcast interview and Forpodcasts, it's very, if people
(34:16):
are watching the video, we bothhave microphones in front of us,
which makes sense because we'redoing an interview that fits,
but if I wanted this to feellike a conversation, like a TV
show, like a, like a TVinterview, I don't use this
microphone, I use a lav mic.
Even for virtual, um, segmentswhere I'm, where I'm recording
here and they're filming instudio, I use a lav mic because
(34:39):
it sends the signal to theaudience differently because you
don't see these kinds ofmicrophones in a TV show.
So I think about that too, oflike.
Is there visually something thatthe microphone is communicating
when I do sales videos, I use aboom mic or a lav mic because I
don't want the microphone infront of me between me and the
(34:59):
person I'm talking to.
I wanted to feel more intimate,so little things like that for
virtual are the visual language.
What is the stuff around youcommunicating?
Um, a little pro tip to rightnow when I'm filming, I'm
standing.
With the camera in front of meand then I'm, it's crooked in
the room so that behind me isthe corner, the crease of the
(35:20):
wall where the two corners meet.
There are bookshelves on bothsides of that.
Those bookshelves point towardsme in the center.
Jason Frazell (35:28):
Yep.
Mike Ganino (35:28):
That is taking advantage of something that
cinematographers know all thetime, of how to use lines to get
the audience to look where youwant them to look.
So when you look at this onvideo, you're seeing a bookshelf
on my left and a bookshelf on myright, and those are both
pointing your eyes to focus onme in the middle.
Those little things do make adifference.
Visual is also your slides.
(35:50):
Your wardrobe.
It's all of those other toolsthat send a signal to the
audience.
So that's the visual.
And then the final one isemotional.
And this is really taking kindof, it's a little bit of a cheat
one, but it's really taking allthe previous four and saying,
what is the overall Experienceyou're creating for the
audience.
How are you hijacking theirhormonal, like the chemicals in
(36:15):
their body, the serotonin, the,the, um, the dopamine.
How are you triggering thethings that trigger emotional
responses in the audience?
And are you aware of them?
Do you have enough contrast?
So those are the five stagelanguages that I think are the
way that an audience sitting ina, in an arena.
(36:36):
An audience sitting at theirdesk watching you on a webinar,
an audience sitting watching apodcast interview, or four
people sitting in a boardroomwatching you present your idea
or your sales pitch.
These are the things that theydon't even recognize, but these
are the five areas that areimpacting what they walk away
with.
Jason Frazell (36:56):
I have to say I have a friend and he has a
podcast mic in front of him allthe time on Zoom and I'm
realizing now it feels like I'mbeing interviewed all the time,
even if we're just catching up.
And it's not, I don't, I don'tthink I've, I don't like
consciously go, Oh, this is, Ido think it's weird, but I
didn't know why until now.
Because it doesn't make
Mike Ganino (37:15):
sense contextually.
Jason Frazell (37:16):
It doesn't make sense contextually because we're
just doing a zoom with a one onone, but that's, that's his
setup is.
So, Mike.
I am very present to the factthat you do this for a living,
and I do this for a living, andthat's all fine and dandy to
talk about this, but not all,not all people, not all of us
are Mike and Jason and a lot ofother people that we know that
do this kind of work and helpyou with this, there are a lot
(37:37):
of people that go, eh, whocares?
And you probably have thesepeople all the time, and when
you're working with corporate,some people just don't care.
And I'll give you a greatexample, I do a lot of training
work with a big, Aerospacemanufacturer.
And a lot of those people arebrilliant.
They're like rocket science,rocket scientists.
(37:58):
They work in plants.
They're looking at numbers.
They're looking at things allday and they would say, yeah,
that sounds nice, but it's goingto feel too dramatic for, I hear
this, oh, this feels a littledramatic or the other people
will think that it's strangebecause they're so used to doing
it a certain way.
So I want to wrap for, for todayand talk a little bit about why
everybody should care.
And this is your opinion,obviously, but, and you cover
(38:19):
this in the book.
Why do we all need to care aboutthis?
Whether you're in sales, whetheryou're sitting in a cubicle,
looking at spreadsheets, whydoes all this matter?
Mike Ganino (38:30):
It really comes down to, and what I say to
people who, who say, Hey, Idon't care.
Fine.
I don't care if you care.
It doesn't matter either way.
The people who are listening toyou, the people that you're
communicating with are walkingaway based on all of these
things that we've shared todaywith an opinion of you, with an
opinion of your product, with anopinion of your service, or your
(38:53):
idea of your book or whatever itis, they're doing it either way.
So, I don't care if you care, Ipromise you they do.
And if you are saying to me,Hey, I give five presentations a
week and I landed every time Iget what I great, then don't
listen to me.
Keep doing what you're doing.
Cause it's working.
Yeah.
But if you find yourselfthinking, huh, I don't know why
(39:14):
I'm not getting every sale.
I don't know what to do toincrease my.
The, the, my employees listeningto our new initiatives and our
new ideas.
I don't know why audiencesaren't asking me to come back
and give another speech or togive another presentation.
I don't know why people aren'tbuying our product and signing
up for our SaaS service.
Then I would say if theproduct's good, if the idea is
(39:37):
good, it is these five leversand the way you communicate them
that determine whether peoplewalk away wanting to.
Listen to you, do business withyou, and adopt the way you
think.
And you cannot care about thatall you want.
I don't care.
I promise you.
The people listening do.
And they're making decisionsbased on how you show up.
Jason Frazell (39:56):
Yeah.
The other objection that I heara lot is, it's just not natural
for me.
I hear this a lot too.
And some, I've had people say, Idon't, I don't think I can, and
Everybody's got, you know, likeyour level, you've got a high
level of functionality to do allthese things.
Everybody's starting somewhere.
(40:16):
You started somewhere.
Some people, some of its nature,some of its nurture.
When I have people that will saythis just doesn't feel natural.
I know what I say.
I'm curious for the audience.
What do you say to that?
And I'm talking about people.
I think they're, what they'reactually saying is I don't think
I can do this is what I believethey actually mean by that.
Now that's not natural.
(40:37):
And I'm going to just share thisreally quick and anecdote.
What I'll say is.
They'll say, Oh, it feelsunnatural to be this, they'll
call it like dramatic orsomething.
I'll say, has any, have any ofyou ever read a book to a child?
And they'll go, ah, how do youread a book to a child?
You and I have four year olds.
You do not read your book toyour child.
Flat, monotone, no emotion, nothing.
(41:00):
Because the kid, the kid will,your, your worst critic will go,
this is boring.
And they will tune outimmediately.
So we, I would offer that we allknow how to do this.
And we all actually, we aremeant to do this.
Hmm.
And then we, and most of my workis in corporate, we get trained
through culture or through badtraining or not enough training
(41:22):
that these are not things thatwe, that are important or should
be done.
So what do you say when somebodycomes and gives an objection?
And of course the speaker is notgoing to say this, but a lot of
corporate people will say this.
Mike Ganino (41:32):
Yeah, no, it's because you say it a lot too,
um, the way that I teachstorytelling to make a scene,
like literally the name of thebook is make a scene because
it's twofold.
One is the like cultural, like,go do something, say something,
make a scene.
But then also like the way totell a story is to start in a
scene, make it a scene, like IfI always say, if you think
(41:53):
you're telling a story, myquestion is if I was there and I
was the director and I had todecide what to put in front of
the camera to film, are youtelling me that?
And if you're telling me when Iwas five, when I was little, I
used to always love to hang outwith my mom.
That's not a scene.
That's a summary.
I can't put that in front of acamera, but I can put a specific
time at Trader Joe's when youlove shopping for walnuts with
your mom that I can film.
(42:14):
So
Jason Frazell (42:14):
what
Mike Ganino (42:15):
I think about that is it's, so I get a lot of
pushback, even from professionalspeakers, Jason, where they say,
ah, my way of doing it.
You know, it's just habitual iswhat you're tapping into.
I think.
And so I say, you're right.
It probably is not natural thatthere's some situation where
you're invited to someone'soffice and you're going to go
sit in a conference room andyou're putting on clothes that
(42:37):
you wouldn't wear at home.
You're dressed up for work in asuit with a tie, but you don't
wear that at home.
None of that's natural either,but you do it.
Why?
Because you know it's effective,because you're working the
gears.
And so I always say, it is gonnafeel unnatural at first for you
to change what you always do.
The same way that like, youknow, my husband loves to like,
(42:57):
move, move, reorganize thehouse.
I always get annoyed at firstbecause I just, where's my
little bowl for my keys?
But in a week, it's fine.
Wherever you put it, I'm goingto find it.
I'm going to get used to it.
You're just used to this way ofbeing, but I would say, ask
yourself the question of, whatis this way of being costing me?
(43:17):
And is it worth doing some workto find new choices that I can
make?
Jason Frazell (43:23):
Brilliant.
Mike, I want to thank you forcoming on for the second time,
and I want to give the audiencea little shout out to you, and
then we'll, we'll wrap and talkabout the book, we've been
talking about the book, we'regoing to talk about the book,
and so now, Mike has been doingsomething really fun, for those
of us who are film andtelevision and awards people,
awards season people, and Icertainly am, you've been
(43:44):
critiquing speeches.
And you do this on Instagram andit's really fun.
I want to ask you, and maybewe'll tag this person when I put
this on social.
What's your favorite speech ofthis award season so far?
Ooh, of this award season.
This is improv.
He had no idea this question wascoming.
Mike Ganino (44:03):
One of my favorite ones that I've, I've been
talking about in the, I've donea bunch of, uh, TV news talking
about these speeches and what wecan learn from them.
Jason Frazell (44:12):
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (44:13):
And my version of critiquing is always taking
something that worked andexplaining why it worked because
I think that's more helpful, youknow, it's way more
Jason Frazell (44:18):
helpful.
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (44:19):
One of the ones that I think has not gotten a
lot of attention but is reallygreat is Jesse Eisenberg
accepting the Independent SpiritAward for the movie he wrote and
directed called A Real Pain.
This is the movie where you'reseeing Kieran Culkin get a bunch
of, um, I think supporting actorwins for it.
Yeah, supporting actor, um, mmhmm.
And so the movie is written byJesse Eisenberg, who has been,
(44:42):
you know, an actor performer along time, but a writer, and he
got up there to accept hisaward, and he could have just
gone through and listed a thankyou, you know, a lot of, a lot
of execs might do this at an endof the year speech or an awards
dinner.
Let me list all the information.
Let me list all the thank yous.
What Jesse did was interesting.
He did something different.
He said years ago, I was in amovie with Emma Stone, Emma
(45:03):
Stone, of course, huge actress,her career's blown up.
They were in a movie calledZombieland.
with Woody Harrelson years agoas teenagers.
It's
Jason Frazell (45:11):
a fun movie.
And he said,
Mike Ganino (45:12):
over the years, she has stayed my friend as her star
has blown up.
You know, she's a huge star andshe's one of the only people he
would do writing.
He would write on McSweeney andthese different sites where
people could write.
He would write.
And he's like, Emma all the timewould text me all the time and
say, Oh, this line is reallyfunny.
This way you open this story wasso great.
(45:33):
He's like, my mom didn't even dothat.
Emma Stone kept doing that overthe years.
And when I had this scriptready, she was the first person
I wanted to read it.
She is of course, the producer,the producer, she helped make
it.
That's so much more meaningfulbecause he gave us context to
their relationship versus just,thank you, Emma Stone for your
friendship and being a producer.
That's been one of my favorites.
(45:53):
Cause it's not getting attentionfor the right reasons.
Yeah.
We can all use that.
We can all use that.
Jason Frazell (45:58):
Yeah.
And to go back to your point,you could film that.
You could film Emma walking intoa bookstore or reading something
and texting Jesse.
You could totally picture thatin a TV show or a movie.
That's so brilliant.
Yeah.
And he called her what hisgodmother or something, or he
made a funny comment about her.
It was great.
Mike Ganino (46:16):
Yeah, it's, it's, it was fantastic and her
reaction was so beautifulbecause she clearly didn't
expect him to reference all theway back to Zombieland, which is
one of both of their firstmovies.
Um, it just was such a momentthat was simple, you know, so it
could get overlooked easily, butI think it's really, it makes a
lot of sense for your, yourfolks listening here who are.
(46:38):
Giving thank yous, thankingpeople for their, you know, in a
weekly meeting, let's say thatyou're doing a end of the end of
the week, weekly meeting, andyou want to thank a team member
for something above and beyond,give it context.
I used to say this all the timewith, um, when I was in the
restaurant industry and I wouldteach our managers, I owned a
restaurant company and I wouldsay, don't say, Hey, you know, I
(46:59):
want to give a shout out toJason, like great job this week,
team member of the week.
It means nothing.
Nobody knows what to replicate.
Jason Frazell (47:07):
Yeah.
Mike Ganino (47:07):
Versus saying, you know, I walked into the shift
last week and everyone, it waschaotic.
It was one of those days.
Y'all know what it's like.
Everyone was in the weeds,racing around, there were fires
going everywhere and you allwere working your butts off to
make it work, manning yourstations and getting it through.
And then I kept seeing oneperson.
Leaning over and saying, what doyou need help with?
What do you need?
(47:27):
What can I get for you?
And I just want to call out thatbehavior from Jason and say,
thank you.
That is what teamwork is.
Let's all get Jason around moremeaningful, more meaningful.
Jason Frazell (47:36):
And also one of the things, uh, we'll wrap with
this.
When you're talking to leaders,they say, I want to be a better
leader.
I want to be a moreinspirational leader, which is a
lot of what communication is.
That also is literally tellingother people what behavior will
have you get acknowledged andwill help you advance your
career versus, Oh, did Mike andJason go out for drinks and they
shared some dirty little secretand now they like, they're just
(47:59):
like buddies and he's justshouting him out.
No, like here's what Mike,here's the actual thing that
Mike did.
That made a difference for ourbusiness.
Mike, this is brilliant.
Want to wrap today by sharingabout Mike's book.
So Mike's book is out now.
It is out in paperback.
It is out on.
It is out on Kindle.
(48:19):
It is brilliant.
I don't buy many books anymoreand I bought yours because I
wanted to read it and mark it upbecause this is a topic that I
love and I'm so happy for youthat you were able to come out
with this because I know youbring such a wealth of you bring
such a wealth of experience fromthe different contexts that I
know you in coupled with you getto work with these brilliant
people who are already greatcommunicators.
That's the fun thing.
(48:39):
And so I would imagine you'realways absorbing from them.
And then we get to experiencethat wisdom in a book that we
all can go out and go grab inthe bookshelf or.
or grab from your favorite localbookstore.
So thank you, Mike.
Thanks for putting out the goodwork in the world.
And thanks for doing, thanks fordoing the good work to make a
difference with communicationbecause so much communication is
so darn boring.
So boring.
(48:59):
And for those of us with a shortattention span, I appreciate it
greatly.
Uh, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks, Mike.
Speaker (49:09):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Talking to
Cool People with Jason Frizzell.
If you enjoyed today's episode,please tell your friends, follow
us on Instagram and Facebook,and give us a shout out, or take
a moment to leave a review oniTunes.
If something from today'sepisode piqued your interest and
you'd like to connect, email usat podcast at jasonfrizzell.
(49:32):
com.
We love hearing from ourlisteners because you're cool
people too.
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